A Batik Air Airbus A320-200, registration PK-LAJ performing flight ID-6155 from Manokwari to Sorong with 125 people on board, was backtracking runway 17 for departure and was about to turn around before the runway threshold when the right hand main gear went off paved surface disabling the aircraft. The passengers disembarked onto the runway via stairs.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull shakes hands with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the start of the Small-and-Medium sized Enterprises conference being held during the one-off summit of 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Sydney, Australia, March 16, 2018. Source: Reuters/David Gray AS AUSTRALIA has geared up to host a so-called Special Summit for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this weekend, the suggestion it may one day join the regional bloc has come up for debate.

The US Embassy to the Philippines has overseen the transfer of a Boeing Insitu ScanEagle Unmanned Aerial System comprising of six drones to the archipelago nation. The transfer was overseen by US Ambassador Sung Y. Kim and Philippine Secretary of National Defense Delfin N. Lorenzana during a ceremony at Villamor Air Base, Pasay City on March 13. An Embassy statement said the package is worth $13.2 million and is financed by the Foreign Military Financing grant program.

Indonesians could be jailed for criticizing national politicians under a new law which came into force Thursday, in what critics slammed as a major step back for the world's third-biggest democracy. The vaguely worded bill passed the 560-member house last month but has just become official, over the objections of President Joko Widodo who refused to sign off on the controversial legislation.

Set up by a Muslim former student activist, the Chinese Indonesian Literature Museum fills an information gap in the history of ethnic Chinese people in Indonesia with its treasure trove of books, newspapers and other documents In May 1998, pro-democracy activist Azmi Abubakar joined thousands of other university students in a blockade of the Serpong area, situated just to the west of Indonesia's capital city, Jakarta. Their mission was to prevent looting during riots sparked by food shortages and high unemployment, amid protests demanding the resignation of Indonesian president Suharto after more than three decades in power.

SINGAPORE: Singapore on Wednesday began a public hearing on how to tackle the threat of fake news, with speakers suggesting measures ranging from blocking websites to balancing the interests of national security and free speech. The wealthy city state is among the countries looking to introduce legislation to rein in fake news, a trend that has stirred concern that such laws could be used to exert government control over media.

File photo of Singapore's national flower - the Vanda 'Miss Joaquim' orchid at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. SINGAPORE: More than 20 hectares of land have been set aside for orchid nurseries in the first such move here, highlighting the importance of the national flower to Singapore.

Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller says the automaker had "an excellent year" in 2017 and is committed to addressing concerns about diesel pollution. LONDON - Britain's government is considering how to deal with the poisoning of an ex-spy as it awaits a Russian government response to its claim that Russian was involved.

Jakarta, March 13 - The police in Indonesia believe they have uncovered a clandestine fake news operation designed to destabilise the government and corrupt the political process, a media report said on Tuesday. In a string of arrests across the archipelago in recent weeks, authorities have revealed the inner workings of a self-proclaimed cyber-jihadi network known as the Muslim Cyber Army , the Guardian report said.

A video shot in a zoo in Indonesia shows an orangutan picking up and smoking a cigarette after it had been tossed into the primate's enclosure by a visitor. A video shot in a zoo in Indonesia shows an orangutan picking up and smoking a cigarette after it had been tossed into the primate's enclosure by a visitor.

The vulnerability of Indonesia's Christians, as well as other religious minorities, is exponentially increasing as radical Islam tightens its grip on the country. The risks faced by non-Muslims were dramatically revealed in late February by a shocking, widely viewed video in which two Christians were publically flogged in front of a mocking crowd.

SINGAPORE: A 68-year-old Singaporean man was sentenced to three weeks' jail on Tuesday for trying to bribe an inspection officer. Lam Kim Heng, the business operator of Heng Heng Eating House in Bukit Batok, committed the offence on Oct 14, 2017.

In this Monday, July 24, 2017, file photo, a GrabBike driver rides on his motorbike in Jakarta, Indonesia. The Southeast Asian ride hailing app Grab is expanding into financial services in partnership with a Japanese credit card company, hoping to offer credit to millions of people without bank accounts.

Standard & Poor's Global Ratings highlighted on Tuesday a deterioration in the balance sheets at Indonesian state-owned enterprises involved in a government-led infrastructure push in Southeast Asia's biggest economy. A man stands near a collapsed girder pole on the construction site of the Bekasi-Cawang toll overpass in Jakarta, Indonesia February 20, 2018 in this photo taken by Antara Foto.

An Indonesian woman pays to a GrabBike driver in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, March 13, 2018. Southeast Asian ride hailing app Grab is expanding into financial services in partnership with a Japanese credit card company, hoping to offer credit to millions of people without bank accounts.

An Indonesian naval officer arranges bags of confiscated crystal meth, part of a 1 tonne seizure, on a dock in Batam, Riau Islands, Indonesia near Singapore on February 10, 2018. Source: Antara Foto/M N Kanwa/via Reuters SINGAPORE is one of the only countries in the world to effectively control drugs because its draconian laws provide a deterrent, the country's ambassador to the United States has claimed.

While some criticize effort to promote language, Sapri Sale's previously published Hebrew-Indonesian dictionary received endorsement from senior imam A Sunni Muslim man recently opened the first-ever Hebrew course in Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country that has no formal ties with Israel and where Hebrew is generally seen as the language of the enemy. Sapri Sale, who last year published the first Hebrew-Indonesian dictionary, says it is mostly Christians who are interested in his courses but he expects Muslims to increasingly become interested in learning the language as well.